Review by Spencer Gordon
Photo provided by A Woman, A Gun, and A Noodle Shop
A Woman, A Gun, and A Noodle Shop
Directed by Yimou Zhang
Starring Honglei Sun, Xiao Shen-Yang, and Ni Yan
Rated R for some violence
A Woman, A Gun, and A Noodle Shop starts out as a general slapstick comedy. We are introduced to a very demanding woman, a skinny man wearing girly clothes, a fat man with two comedic buckteeth, and a timid woman. They all run a noodle shop set literally in the middle of nowhere. Being juvenile slapstick humor, a mass array of physical humor complimented by unintelligent dialogue ensues and we as an audience are left scratching our heads.
I remember sitting in my chair baffled as to how any of the characters falling over each other or the fat guy acting stupid was supposed to make me laugh. I was also perplexed at a random yet amazing dough twirling performance by the actors as their characters make noodles. For five minutes, a pie of dough is just twirled majestically between the actors and thrown in the air as they do flips. It was awesome, sure, but after it was finished I sat there and thought to myself, “What the hell was that?” That thought continued to fill my head throughout the entire beginning of the film as the movie tried to be funny and unique while at the same time developing a plot.
Once you get through the beginning, however, you will be rewarded.
The film is a re-imagining of the Coen brother’s (No Country for Old Men, Fargo) film Blood Simple so after the slapstick beginning, the film’s energy and feeling dissolves into that dark Coen groove. Anyone who has seen a Coen film can tell you that they all have a distinct feeling to them, and that same feeling is felt here. A Noodle Shop director Yimou Zhang must have been trying to imitate the “Coen feeling” with the slapstick beginning, for it gave the rest of the film an excuse to introduce new darker humor instead of the headache causing actions from before. I found myself welcoming this new take and even chuckling to myself a few times.
During the second half of the film we learn that the rich owner of the noodle shop wants his cheating wife and lover (the demanding woman) to be killed by a dirty cop. The owner hires a “bad” cop to kill them but when the cop actually goes to perform the task, he doesn’t go through with it. Instead the cop goes back and shoots the owner. After the kill, the film grows even darker and picks up the pace for the better.
The conversation between the cop and the owner is the last bit of dialogue you hear for about forty-five minutes. The rest of the film plays as a clever type of film noir. Every character is doing something sneaky and therefore each has to stay as quiet as possible. The film brings you in to its world and makes you sit on the edge of your seat as you wait to see how the situations pan out. It wasn’t until I heard a character finally say something that I realized how long it had been since dialogue was used.
In this way, the film reminds me a lot of the 2002 movie Panic Room. The great scene with Jodie Foster’s character wielding the sledgehammer as she sneaks through the house was almost replicated in A Noodle Shop, but instead the cop wields a sword. We also get to enjoy a lot of “video game” type camera angles where the character is pressed against the wall right next to the opening of a staircase, allowing only the audience to see what is coming down the stairs. I wish the entire film could have been like this, instead of the beginning being so happy-go-lucky. Filmmaking wise, I could see why having such different halves would make a good contrast, but when the film started so over the top trying to force humor down my throat I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I enjoyed the last half of the film, but not nearly as much as I wanted to.
Overall, this is a good foreign film that I definitely recommend to Coen fans (as I am myself) so they can try and draw similarities between it and Blood Simple. It’s a movie that definitely knows what it’s doing. Despite a weak and peculiar beginning, A Woman, A Gun, and A Noodle Shop delivers with a solid middle and end.
Grade: B for giving us the goosebumps, chills, and dark humor of a Coen film during the middle and end of the film.
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